


The Good Ending

by Aithilin



Series: Nyx Ulric Appreciation Week 2020 [6]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Gen, Good End, Nyx Ulric Appreciation, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-24
Updated: 2020-06-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:01:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24897349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aithilin/pseuds/Aithilin
Summary: Everyone had been desperate for an end to the War. But no one really knew what to do with it when it came.
Relationships: Cor Leonis & Nyx Ulric
Series: Nyx Ulric Appreciation Week 2020 [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1794022
Comments: 4
Kudos: 18





	The Good Ending

“Come on, hero, stay with me.”

“Really hate that name.”

“Get used to it.”

The stone arches over the Cavaugh Crag rose around them in the the dust-red sky. From their angle, it looked like the earth had been torn apart, where threads barely kept the two kingdoms from separating. The red clay of Cavaugh seeped bloody rain water in waterfalls along the jagged edge of the canyon, while the golden, stinging dusts of Lucis bound the wayward silt together like congealing blood. The tear in Eos was open and raw, and they were right over it, watching the seeping red wound from the makeshift bridge of one of the stone arches. 

Below them, on opposite outcrops, were two villages. Sister villages, shuttered against the storm trying to cleanse the wound they had settled on. From this angle, they could survey the entire region, the whole of the Crag stretching out beneath them with its red river far below. The shadow of the mountains that made it nearly impossible to just walk into the sister kingdom rose like russet shadows in the near distance— young mountains a bloody maw ready to consume anyone who didn’t know the safe valleys and passages through those jagged teeth— and Nyx could see the edge of the clouds beyond them. 

The rain hadn’t stopped for a week, battering the near side of those mountains, drenching the two little towns barely connected by a Lucian-built bridge crossing the chasm below. The sun was rising through the thinning clouds and golden dust, washing the border with a shinning, blessed light that seemed to illuminate the great stone arches threading the Crag together. The gems and ore embedded in the arches gleamed in the new light despite the storm, and for a moment Nyx saw the glittering stitches made of shining stones. 

“Are we done here?”

It had been a hard climb up this particular arch to survey the towns below. The storm had made it slippery and cold; his hands ached with the strain of scaling the jagged rocks for handholds on the initial climb. 

It had been an act of desperation, a last attempt to safely survey the bridge before considering sending the others across. 

Leonis gave him a wry look in response, and stepped away with his phone already in hand. Nyx sighed and settled in to watch the breaking storm as the winds shifted, as the dusts changed direction. The mask of his armour had protected him from the worst of it during the night, but now he threw up a small barrier to keep it from his eyes. The world appeared as if through frosted glass for a moment before the magic settled, and Nyx could see the ripples where the dust was blown against it. 

“Afraid of the wind, hero?” Cor Leonis returned to his post, a hand shielding his eyes before Nyx extended the barrier to him; “Seems a bit desperate to use the King’s magic for this.”

“Desperate times, Immortal,” Nyx smiled, grateful for the protection of his uniform as he watched the Glaive procession below. There had been no Nif in sight a far as the eye could see. “Did we really need to come up here?”

“Desperate times, hero,” Cor responded, arms crossed as he watched the unhindered crossing. 

The Nifs had gone silent after a dozen other bridges along the border had been destroyed. Some were Lucian built like this one, following a historic road from the Gate through right to a valued mountain pass that would open Cavaugh to them. Nyx had always wondered what the stretch of Great Cavaugh Plains— the sea of grasses and flat farmland— would look like. But the Nifs with their trained beasts, their crafted soldiers, their captured daemons, had always barred the way. 

Until a week ago, when the news from the Marshal’s spies in the Nif capital started to reach them; unrest, unease, one too many revolts and far too many escapes of creatures from hidden labs. A king behemoth had been spotted on the outskirts of Gralea itself, the resistance in the borders— armed by Lucis— had started to fight with more fervour as Majitek troops were moved inward to protect Gralea. Tenebrae rose, Galahd rose, and Niflheim withdrew to fight the fires within its own overextended lands. 

Lucis had been desperate for a win like this. 

King Regis had sent emissaries to his allied abroad, Altissia, Tenebrae, Galahd, and Cavaugh responded with the same separation for sovereignty. It was the last, frantic push back against the Empire that had attempted to span the world. The nameless provinces annexed centuries earlier turned to Lucis for guidance. 

This was Lucis’ response. 

The Glaives below moved in a well-trained procession— farmers, fishermen, children who grew up in the cities the Lucian deemed too foreign for consideration; none had ever expected to be in this position or in this war— flanking the trucks emblazoned with medical symbols across the canvas-covered sides. Boxes of food, medical aid, requested supplies were being ferried out to the desperate allies the King was attempting to reforge ties with. The agreements has been made as the borders were strengthened, as the resistances overthrew bases and beat back what few troops the Nifs could afford to drop from the sky. 

“There was a time,” Cor said with a pat to Nyx’s shoulder and the indication that they should start their own journey across the stone arch that served as their personal bridge; “that you couldn’t see the mountains for all the Nif ships.”

They had been set up there as scouts. Brave enough to take out any ambushes waiting for the crossing below, stupid enough to climb a stone arch to do it. Now they had to make the crossing themselves, eyes still on the possible dangers below that could be anything from a Nif-led insurgency, or an indication that the dark and dormant base beyond the Cavaugh sister town might flare to life. 

“I remember, Immortal. That was two months ago.”

“I assumed the blows to the head you take affected your memory, hero.” The jibe came with a small shrug and a smaller smile. “Have you ever seen Cavaugh?”

“No, haven’t had the chance.”

“Neither have I.” Cor indicated the mountain range, still silent and open; a red shape of shadows still looming over the distance. The rain had stopped, but the Lucian dust was now clinging to anything damp. “I’m told they still ranch chocobos there. The breed is faster from the plains, and naturally green feathered.”

“No forests?”

“No forests. There’s swamp though. From where some inland sea dried up eons ago. Have their own breed of catoblepas there too. Shorter, slower, green patches where mould grows on them. Or algae. One of the two.”

“Thought you never saw Cavaugh.”

“I haven’t. But Drautos grew up there. And talks about it like it’s a paradise.”

Nyx was familiar with the Captain’s talk. Usually after a win, or in a rare unguarded moment when some drinks could pry the stories from his lips. Stories of small villages on flat farmland, with nothing to break the horizon but for a tiny grove of determined trees here and there. Windbreaks were raised from piles of sod, and grass grew on the roofs of the poor, before the Nifs came in with drop ships laden with concrete and prefabricated homes waiting to be pieced together. Like in Galahd, it had seemed like a gift at first. 

The Nifs had never jumped straight to the conquering and fire. 

Nyx glanced down at the procession still crossing the bridge. At the trucks overflowing with gifts of Lucian made aid and supplies. The Nifs had all started their occupations with gifts. 

“He’s not coming back from this,” Cor said. 

It was a statement, and broke through to Nyx’s thoughts, jarring him back to the reality of the scouting mission and the long walk across the arch. “Who isn’t?”

“Your Captain.”

Nyx wanted to argue that. He wanted to say that Drautos had a life in Lucis now, like they all did. He wanted to defend that life, the importance of the city that had taken them in and given them some semblance of power over their lives. But he knew the Marshal was right. 

Drautos had spent years living a the headquarters. There were rooms aside from the barracks, his office within the same building. When they were even home at all. The Captain had flitted between military camps and a soldier’s dorm room for as long as Nyx could remember, always with a quick reprimand to not snoop any further than necessary. 

Nyx knew that he wasn’t coming back from this mission. “Wouldn’t you want to stay, Sir? If you were able to just walk home and not have a mission ahead of you?”

“I’ve never been in the position,” Cor admitted. “But would you?”

‘Yes’ was an easy answer. It would absolve him of any loyalty to Lucis then and there. It would cut the last tethers when the time came, when he could stroll into Galahd with a weight off his shoulders and magic no longer burning through his veins. 

“I don’t know. I’m not in that position yet.”

Libertus would say yes. He wanted with every desperate, bitter bone in him to go home. To fix things with the Nifs running back to their own kingdom. Libertus had been dreaming of it for years. And a few years ago, Nyx would have said yes too. He would have packed up everything the day the news broke that treaties were being offered to every other nation in Eos, that help was being offered, that the Nifs were withdrawing as they collapsed under the weight of their own power. 

“You might be soon, hero.”


End file.
